


the primacy of personal conscience

by birdsofthesoul



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Family Dynamics, Forced Abortion, Gen, Morality, Resentment, Sick Dick Grayson, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:07:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28262862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdsofthesoul/pseuds/birdsofthesoul
Summary: "WHAT MAKES IAGO EVIL? some people ask. I never ask."— Joan Didion,Play It as It LaysOr: Dick, his family, and the moral morass of a wishing well.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson & Damian Wayne, Dick Grayson & Jason Todd, Tim Drake & Damian Wayne, Tim Drake & Dick Grayson
Comments: 67
Kudos: 135





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This should feel old hat to Dick— Bruce has spent the last twenty years in various tailspins, big and small, and Dick’s weathered enough of them to know Bruce will pull through in one piece.

JOKER’S LATEST KILLS, all the headlines scream, and there, in bold print, a breathless declaration: MURDERED JUST LIKE THE WAYNES!

Bruce, predictably, is in a tailspin.

This should feel old hat to Dick— Bruce has spent the last twenty years in various tailspins, big and small, and Dick’s weathered enough of them to know Bruce will pull through in one piece. It’s just a matter of waiting; it’s just a matter of faith.

“That’s your problem, Dick,” says Jason, who has neither the patience to wait out the storm, nor the misplaced faith that plagues Dick. “This is a shitstorm of his own making.” Pulling through, then, is a moral obligation. “If he’d just let me put a bullet in that pile of filth—”

They keep going around in circles, and derailment is not an option. Jason, like Bruce, just doesn’t know when to quit.

“Like I was saying,” Dick says, “this isn’t the Joker’s usual MO.”

“The Joker _doesn’t_ have a usual MO, and besides— _fuck the Joker_. I mean it. It’s always _Joker_ this, _Joker_ that. Let’s talk about Bruce for a change. The man operates on dogma, for crying out loud. That hardly qualifies him to serve as the arbiter of morality.”

All of this is true. All of this is also irrelevant.

“We’re on a case, Todd,” Damian says. “Besides, _you_ are hardly one to speak of morality.”

“And I’ve hardly ever inflicted _my_ personal conscience on any of you. That’s what Bruce’s rules really are— _his_ personal conscience.”

“It’s one we share,” Dick says.

A pause.

Circles, Dick thinks. No one steps off the loop.

“Funny,” Jason says, setting his beer down on the nightstand with a hard _clink_. “I could have sworn his spawn shared mine.”

He says this like it’s meant to be particularly devastating, but he’s lost his touch for the theatrics. Or maybe Dick is just preoccupied— he’s ground control transmitting to Bruce’s Major Tom, and all he’s getting is static.

So sue him; he’s on high alert.

“Are you even listening to me?” Jason demands.

“You’re mad at Bruce and you’re tired of the Joker,” Damian says. “You’re a one-trick pony, Todd.”

That’s what hinging your life on Bruce’s whims gets you; there’s not much variety when it comes to a post-Robin existence. Most days, it’s just walking the line between disappointment and disappointment— Bruce and your own.

“I’ve accepted my lot in life.” Jason shrugs philosophically. “Hey— since when do you call Bruce by his first name?”

“What,” Dick says, amused. “You think you’re the only one in this family mad at Bruce? Take a number, Jay.”

“Besides,” Damian adds, spilling off the bed to come stand next to Dick. “We’re still _on a case_.”

Stow your shit, Todd. But Damian can’t really say that— Bruce has never been able to stow _his_ shit, and it treads too close to hypocrisy to demand this from Jason.

“He killed a lottery winner in a dark alley outside of a theater,” Jason says, still belligerent. “It’s not really a case when the motive is glaringly obvious.”

Poke Bruce, watch him spin.

But it’s not the Joker’s style to poke at old wounds. He’s in the business of making fresh scars.

Dick folds up the papers. “Either way, we need to send him back to Arkham.”

“There you go again, inflicting your conscience on me,” Jason says, getting to his feet. “Face it, Dickiebird, the moral calculus doesn’t shake out your way.”

“Jason.”

“I just hope you’re prepared to watch the Joker inflict _his_ conscience on Gotham. _Again_.”

“ _Jason_.”

“Christ, it’s like we’re stuck in the fucking Groundhog Day.”

\--

Here’s the thing: the moral calculus doesn’t shake out anyone’s way.

\--

They’re in the Sheraton off the highway— thirty minutes out from the brownstone, and a different plane of existence from Bruce. Dick has been calling Bruce’s number for the past hour, twice the time it would have taken for him to drive into the city and check on the man himself, and at this point, he’s not sure how to explain his reluctance to confront Bruce in the flesh.

Feet of clay. That’s how he described his devastation the first time he watched Bruce spiral. It wasn’t the bruise Bruce left on his cheek, or how his relationship with his father had been left in flux, again, or the funeral he hadn’t even known about until it was four weeks too late.

It’s the self-destruction Bruce pursues with single-minded vindictiveness.

“Nakano’s blaming the deaths on Father,” Damian says when Dick comes out of the bathroom. He gestures vaguely at the TV, but the news has already cut to commercial.

“Nakano blames everything on us.”

On screen, a Nightwing bear waddles over to put its stubby little arms around a Robin bear. “Clearly the toy manufacturers think he’s full of shit,” Damian says, a great deal of satisfaction leaking into his voice.

Bruce is a capitalist, and his work is ever primed for consumption— Nightwing and Robin are no different.

The TV turns off with a soft click. “Still,” Damian says, “sometimes I wonder if he has a point.”

It’s a loaded statement.

Dick takes a seat on the bed. “Refusing to kill the Joker isn’t the same as being complicit in his crimes, Damian.”

“You didn’t let me near the Joker in my first year,” Damian says. “Or in the years after.”

That’s not wholly true. Dick has let Damian near the Joker exactly once, and it almost ended in a crossroads deal— it was Bruce who came swooping out of the shadows to save Dick from his bad decisions, like he always does.

Neither Dick nor Bruce is particularly _good_ at being a parent, but put them together, and they somehow pass for functional.

“Nobody in Gotham is as safe as Robin when the Joker is at large,” Damian says. “Doesn’t seem fair to me, when they could be just as safe if Father would just—” He breaks off. “But you’re going to tell me that the ends don’t justify the means.”

Dick’s a pragmatist. He knows most people think it’s the other way around, but Bruce is the idealist in the family.

Bruce is the one who believes in grace.

“It would be nice,” Damian says, “if there was some way of calculating the moral outcome.”

“You mean a formula.”

“Like the localization formula.”

Dick laughs to himself. “That’s a leading statement.”

“Maybe,” Damian allows. “But you have to admit, it would be _nice_ if the solution only depended on the endpoints of the action— the intentions and the results.”

“I taught you better than that,” Dick says mildly. “It’s the _fixed_ points of the action, Dames. The _saddle_ points of the Hamiltonian.”

“You can’t tell me killing the Joker wouldn’t bring equilibrium to Gotham. My point stands.” Damian hops off the bed, looking very pleased with himself.

“Where are you going?”

“To the bistro. Do you want anything?”

Dick wants to sit Damian down and teach him about contour integrals, where the endpoints are important, yes, but so is the path taken. This is a family that travels in circles; this is a family that communicates in loops. It is vital, he thinks, that Damian learns about the adiabatic process. Damian needs to know that sometimes the system is returned to the original state, and the only thing it’s got to show for its trouble is its phase— the shape of its travels, a deeply geometrical record of its history.

Sometimes, _only_ the path matters.

The truth is, Dick can make the moral calculus shake out any way he wants, which is to say there’s little point to these calculations.

It’s really better to just stick to your guns.

“Richard?”

“Yes?”

“I said, do you want anything?” Damian shifts from one foot to another, suddenly looking a little lost and unsure.

(Back when Dick was Robin, Bruce liked to trail off midsentence and leave Dick hanging, which meant Dick spent the first seven years of his career thinking he was shit at holding a conversation. After he became Nightwing, he asked Bruce if he could tell Dick the next time Dick put his foot in his mouth, and Bruce looked at him with such bewilderment that he had to concede it was all in his head.)

Dick puts away his phone. “Hey,” he says, in what he hopes isn’t just a misguided attempt to be _better_ than Bruce, “how about we go out for lunch instead?”

Damian lights up. “Can we go to that kebab place?”

“Sure,” Dick says. He has no clue where it is, but he supposes Damian’s more than happy to lead the way.

Bruce can wait, he thinks. Bruce, too, can wait.

\--

The kebab place, as it turns out, has a secret menu, and a secret, _secret_ menu, which is just ordering off the menu.

“Just like real life,” says the waitress, which is a non-sequitur if Dick’s ever heard one.

No one gets to order off the menu in this life. But if he could—

\--

Sometimes, Dick just wants Bruce to come back and be a father.

\--

Eight missed call and fourteen texts later, Bruce texts back: _Just sent the Joker back to Arkham. You can come by now._

\--

There are four stories in the brownstone, and Bruce eschews them all. On some level, Dick gets it. There’s a certain kind of liberty in self-flagellation, the freedom that comes with having hit rock bottom.

The problem with Bruce is that he never hits rock bottom in one go. He rattles his way down like he’s getting shaken down in a pinball machine, and it’s the saddest fucking thing Dick’s ever had to watch.

“Sometimes I wish we lived in a state with stand your ground laws,” Bruce says, and it’s the last thing Dick’s ever expected to hear him say. “And I wish someone had blown that clown to kingdom come.”

He’s shaking.

“Jason still can,” Dick says. “He won’t mind doing it in Pennsylvania.”

“I don’t want _Jason_ to do it. I don’t want anyone in this family to do it.”

Bruce is pacing the length of the room. Eighteen steps, and he turns around and does it all over again. He’s at sixteen when he sits down abruptly and says, “I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to hear this.”

“Actually, I do,” Dick says. Deep down, he’s been wondering if Bruce finds the Joker fundamental to Gotham. If this is where all the rescue attempts spring from— the ugly, unvarnished truth that Bruce simply finds Gotham foreign without the Joker.

Foreign, and thus hostile.

(“I’ve really been kicked around, Bruce,” Dick said two months ago, and Bruce didn’t know he’d meant the Joker.)

“I don’t really mean this,” Bruce says, continuing like he hasn’t heard Dick speak at all. It’s possible— he’s so busy listening to the Dick inside his head talk, he usually misses what the real Dick has to say. “I know you dislike excessive violence.”

Dick sits down next to him. “When I was Robin, I thought the no-kill rule was for my benefit.”

“It was, partially,” Bruce admits. “I couldn’t let you be raised by a murderer.” He pauses. “And I don’t want to raise Damian with more blood on my hands than I already have.”

Dick thinks Damian wouldn’t want that either. _He_ doesn’t want Damian to want that, which is his convoluted way of saying that he thinks, despite everything, it would be best if Bruce’s hands stayed clean.

“Of course,” Bruce continues wryly, “you’ve been doing the bulk of the raising.”

He sounds more relieved than anything else.

It’s almost too much for Dick to handle.

“What else did the Joker do?” he asks. Shop talk. They’ve always been good at that. “What set you off so badly?”

“He said he heard Robin had flown the coop. He wanted to make sure he had a potential Batman waiting just in case Damian wasn’t up to snuff.”

“Was that it?”

Bruce stares at Dick. “Isn’t this enough?”

Maybe it is. Maybe the years spent prying Bruce off every cross he’s climbed on have skewed Dick’s perception of what really qualifies as _enough_.

“I guess it is,” Dick says. It’s just—

They’re coming off the worst year of their lives. Alfred is dead, Damian’s camping out in Dick’s hotel room, Bruce has lost most of his parents’ fortune, and _this_ is what trips up Bruce.

It’s unexpected, is all.

“Sorry, Bruce,” he says, trying for empathy, and failing that, sincerity. “The hits just keep coming, don’t they?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But then again, he thinks, that’s not something Dick understands. Not really. Bruce’s raison d’être was founded on a profound lack of closure, and he made sure the concept stayed foreign to Dick.
> 
> Tim’s dying on a hill that doesn’t exist for Dick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tim is an unreliable narrator -- but then again, they all are.

Here are the particulars. The Joker said he shot the man out of the goodness of his heart. There’s not much of that in here, he said, holding his hand to his chest, but I’ve been a changed man since Gotham City put her faith in me. I shot that man because he won $370 million through the wishing well, and I couldn’t let the good people of Gotham think miracles only cost 25¢ apiece.

Here are some other particulars. For the past five weeks, Gotham residents have had unparalleled luck in winning lotteries. Hospital traffic has slowed to a trickle; the Gotham Gazette reports that five patients with terminal diagnoses have made full recoveries. Last Saturday, a man crawled out of his grave and walked naked into the city. When asked, his widow said that God had heard her prayers; when pressed, she declined to further elaborate.

“If there really is a wishing well,” Dick said, “then the widow knows where to find it.”

That was two days ago. Dick has since installed a tracker in her phone.

Tim doesn’t know _why_ it bothers him when Dick does things like that. He’s always known Dick doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty; he’s always known Dick is capable of being ruthless.

(He fired you when you least expected it, a tiny voice whispers in the back of Tim’s mind.

Just like Bruce had fired _him_.)

“I thought you were going to talk to her,” Tim says now.

“What would I even say?”

“I don’t know. You’re the one who’s good with people.”

A long silence.

“I would have to lie,” Dick says finally. “If I told her the truth— there’d be no way to sugarcoat it. If she helped us, she’d be an active participant in sending her husband back to the grave. If she didn’t— she’d be on the hook for prolonging the chaos. The whole thing just seems unnecessarily cruel.”

He’s talking like there’s no middle ground. There’s no room for compromise— not when Bruce is running the show, not when Dick is calling the shots.

“It doesn’t have to be,” Tim says. “It’s just— we could wish that no more wishes could be made. Or that no _bad_ wishes could be made. We can even move the well if we have to. You said it yourself, Dick, C-4 isn’t the answer to everything. Her husband doesn’t _need_ to die.”

“Don’t you think,” Dick says, sounding tired and brittle, “that the well would be tamper-proof?”

“Only if it was designed with malicious intentions.”

“You think it wasn’t?”

It doesn’t matter what Tim _thinks_. What matters is the evidence, and there’s no evidence stacking up saying the well has to be a _bad_ thing.

Tim asks, “Shouldn’t we at least try?”

Dick is silent.

“You know,” Tim says, “after you got shot— Bruce would have _killed_ for a wishing well like this.”

Dick wasn’t even there. He didn’t see _anything_. He went from being comatose to being Ric Grayson, and the Bruce he saw in snatches was never the man who almost backhanded Tim off a Gotham skyscraper.

 _That_ Bruce would have hired a small army to stand watch over a wishing well, if one had existed at the time.

Dick says, “Did I ever tell you about the time I tried to resurrect Bruce in a Lazarus pit?”

A non sequitur. Dick’s always been good at those.

“It wasn’t Bruce. I resurrected his zombie clone, and it chased Alfred and Damian all over the manor.”

“And then you killed it.”

“It died on its own, but that’s beside the point.”

The point itself is irrelevant. Tim knows what Dick is going to say, and he doesn’t want to hear it. This argument is familiar, old hat. Tim’s not even sure it qualifies as an argument.

Dick sighs.

“That doesn’t really work on me anymore,” Tim tells him.

“Let’s be honest,” Dick says. “I’m not sure it ever did.”

\--

It did.

It still does.

\--

Damian pays him a visit next.

“Richard benched me,” he announces as soon as Tim opens the door. He’s dressed as Robin, without the R— _that’s_ back on Tim’s chest, but clearly Damian still lays claim to red, green, and gold.

“Thought you were Flamebird now,” Tim says.

“I am.”

“Dick didn’t make you a new uniform?”

Damian sniffs. “Richard doesn’t dictate my sartorial choices.”

That’s a no, then.

It’s uncharacteristic of Dick— but then again, maybe he doesn’t really want Damian in other colors, until Damian is ready to wear black and blue. It’s clear that Damian is to Dick what Dick is to Bruce.

Little boy blue, Tim thinks. It’s oddly fitting, given what Damian has done to the name of Robin— but then again, Bruce and Dick don’t really care.

“What do you want?” he asks, defeated.

Damian holds up a copy of the Gotham Gazette. _LAZARUS RISEN_ , the headlines gasp. _ARE THE END TIMES NEAR?_

\--

“Richard’s headed to the old subway tunnel system,” Damian says. “He didn’t take me, because he thought I’d try to make a wish.”

A wish, Tim thinks. “Alfred?”

“Alfred,” Damian confirms.

\--

It all circles back to loss.

\--

Tim never told Dick about his father’s brief resurrection.

He’s always been tight-lipped about the months he spent alone looking for Bruce, and he’s sure that Dick has filled in the blanks with hazy notions of Tim, by turns disconsolate and shell-shocked, but the truth is he had to get through them somehow, and so he marched through the loss.

So Dick doesn’t know about Jack, and Tim doesn’t want to talk about Jack, and that should have been it for all things past, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But the thing about second deaths is that the ghosts tend to stick around, and while his dad wasn’t very good at that when he was still alive, he’s giving it the good ol’ college try in death.

It’s mostly just in Tim’s head— it’s mostly just regret.

The resurrection lasted for three days, and in the end, it was only long enough to say goodbye.

Tim _could_ tell Dick. He knows Dick would be appropriately sympathetic. He thinks Dick might even offer something more substantial than one of his usual platitudes. But none of that matters. Dead fathers and aborted goodbyes don’t factor into Dick’s decision to get rid of the wishing well — Dick can’t keep it around because desperate people are _careless_ , and careless people make for expensive accidents.

And Gotham’s already flat-out broke from Bruce’s latest accident.

\--

All of this is to say that Dick may be the authority on moral calculus, but Tim is the expert when it comes to loss.

\--

Here’s the thing about running in circles. Sooner or later you’ll wind back at the start, and inevitably, you’ll tell yourself: _this time, I’ll do things better_.

Then you’ll proceed to make the same mistakes.

Tim believes in geography, and the tunnels, it seems, are where things go wrong. He lost the cowl underground. He lost _Robin_ underground. It’s where the first acts of tragedies begin and end for him, which is why he holds them in his mind with an uneasy reverence, and he doesn’t choose to think too closely why he’s picking through their flooded ruins now.

Geography begets change.

Their faith in each other is eternally misplaced if they stay above ground, but here, two hundred feet under Gotham, they can rip the bandage off.

The tunnels are big enough to hold the elephant in the room. It’s the one they’ve been circling like the blind men in that old story, Tim mistaking his own resentment as a call to action, Dick handed disobedience and told to call it love. But the elephant is still an elephant and they’re not really blind, and now they must call a spade a spade.

It’s Damian, Tim doesn’t say. He actually calls it Robin, but what he really means is _you love Damian more than you’ll ever love me_.

And this is true, but it’s also too reductive, and nothing about their relationship has been concise or succinct. Everything comes with qualifiers, conditions in fine print, and if accuracy were key, the elephant would be named Damian-Bruce-Robin. A combination of _you threw me away_ and _you never wanted me in the first place_ , because that’s the tragedy of Tim’s story. Has been, and from the looks of it, always will be.

\--

“Thank you,” Damian says, quiet.

“Don’t thank me yet,” Tim says. “Have you figured out what you’re going to say to Dick when you see him?”

\--

They’ve almost reached the bottom of the tunnels when Damian says, “I think he’d understand. He tried to resurrect Father when you were gone.”

“He said it was a disaster.”

“Only because he was resurrecting a murderous clone. Things went well enough for Kane.”

That’s new.

“Kane?” Tim asks.

“She was hurt,” Damian says. “She didn’t think she’d make a full recovery, so she had Richard throw her in the Pit after she overdosed.”

“And he agreed?”

“He owed her. She’d gotten hurt trying to help him save Father.”

So much for the natural order. Tim thinks he should be surprised, but the truth is that’s how Dick has always been— rigid when it comes to Bruce’s principles, but eternally flexible when it comes to Bruce.

\--

They find Dick in the pond at the bottom of the steps. He’s just surfacing, and it probably doesn’t help his mood to look up and see the two of them staring down at him, but all he says is, “Make yourselves useful and grab me my jacket.”

Damian hands him his cape.

Dick doesn’t take it. He sits down on the steps, still sopping wet, and after a beat, Damian moves to sit down next to him, leaving Tim all alone at the top of the stairs.

It’s a familiar scene.

“I’m surprised,” Dick says, “to see the two of you working together.”

“It’s a first,” Tim agrees. He looks down in the water; it’s murky, but he can see the glint of coins at the bottom. “Is that—”

“It’s more of a pit than a well,” Dick says. “But then again, that’s how these things tend to go.”

He sounds like he’s been around this block a couple of times now— he sounds like a rerun of a rerun.

“Sit,” Dick says.

Tim doesn’t. “Is the pit still functional?”

“For now.”

“It really is tamper-proof?”

“Seems to be,” Dick says. “After all, you’re standing here, aren’t you?”

“What were you doing down there?” Damian asks, oddly subdued.

“I’ll tell you later,” Dick says, wringing out his shirt. He’s dripping everywhere— he’s gone bloodless from the cold, and Tim can see that he’s shivering, but he ignores Damian when the kid tries to help him up.

“Let’s get a few things straight,” Dick says, and his tone broaches no argument. “Damian— I know why you’re here, and I can’t let you go through with it.”

“You threw _Kane_ —”

“ _She_ made the decision. I executed it.”

“Only because you owed her,” Damian insists. “And I owe Alfred. I got him killed, and now I’m supposed to pass up a chance to get him back?”

Dick opens his mouth, but Damian cuts him off.

“I didn’t get to say goodbye,” he says wetly. “ _You_ didn’t get to either— you weren’t even there! You were Ric! It’s not _fair._ You would have done anything to bring back Father, but why won’t you do the same for Alfred?”

“Because it’s _not_ the same,” Dick says. “We _knew_ how Lazarus Pits worked. But we know _nothing_ about this pit— do the wishes go bad? Are they reversible? Is there a time limit? I’m guessing at least _one_ of the answers is yes. So let’s say you wish for Alfred back, and you get that— but now he’s dying slowly from a terminal disease. It’s a possibility we can’t rule out— for all we know, the Joker happened upon the lottery winner _because_ he won the lottery. Does that make sense?”

Damian’s gone quiet.

Dick’s looking at Tim. “Or— what if there’s a clock on his resurrection and it runs out by the end of the week?”

“Or what if none of that happens?” Tim asks. “You’re a cynic, Dick— don’t even try to pretend otherwise— and you’re predisposed to assume the worst of people. You were brought up that way, and maybe you try to be different from Bruce, but you fall back on a defensive position when you’re scared, and _Bruce_ is what that looks like. So you’re scared. Maybe you’re scared because the Joker’s linked to this pond, maybe you’re scared of what the pond can do. Just admit it, and spare me the bullshit about the natural order— I’m not seventeen anymore and I’m not going to buy it.”

Dick stays silent, and Damian’s looking at Tim with wide eyes.

“Look,” Tim says. “None of the things you said three years ago applies to this situation. You said if I brought back my parents, then why stop there? Why not resurrect your parents? Bruce’s parents? Everyone who died an untimely death? Where does it stop? And now I’m telling you, it doesn’t _have_ to stop. This well is open to the public— people are going to come. People are going to wish for their loved ones back. It’s fair— and I know you’re going to ask me if it’s ethical, if it’s moral, but Dick, how would you even define morality in our world? Bruce spares the Joker because it’s ethical, not because it’s moral— I’m not even sure he believes such a thing exists. I’m not sure _I_ believe it exists— at least, not in the way you define it. I believe in a social contract. Primarily, the duties we owe to each other— and the way I see it, I owe it to Gotham to let it make up its mind what it wants to do with the well. So here—” he empties his wallet and finds the only quarter hidden in a card sleeve, and presses it into Damian’s hands— “have at it, Damian.”

Damian clutches the quarter tightly, but he doesn’t take a step forward. He’s still staring at Dick.

“Dames,” Dick says gently. “Listen to me.”

“You think the wish will go bad,” Damian says.

“I’m almost positive. I just swam to the bottom of the pond to figure out why it’s granting wishes, and there’s a coin stuck to the ground. It looks Babylonian, and I’m guessing it’s cursed— I can’t move it. I’m going to have to drain the pond and blast the coin out of the ground with C4, and even then there’s a good chance that won’t work. Tell me, Damian, does this well still sound like a _good_ thing?”

“No,” Damian says. “But the Lazarus Pits sound equally bad on paper— yet they’re a net positive for us. Todd is alive and sound of mind _because_ my mother put him in one. Kane is still with us because _you_ put her in one. This well could be the same— don’t we at least owe it to Alfred to try?”

Dick sighs. He broadcasts exhaustion; in the dim light of the tunnels, he looks like Bruce.

Tim knows Damian sees it too.

“You’re talking about putting faith over science,” Dick says.

Damian contemplates this. “I suppose I am,” he allows.

“Are you _comfortable_ using Alfred as a guinea pig?”

“That’s a leading question.”

That gets a smile out of Dick. “I suppose it is,” he says, and then he gets to his feet. “Look— I can’t stop you, Damian. I just want you to think about the potential fallout before you make your choice.”

He’s good, Tim thinks. He’s gotten even better over the last few years.

Damian’s holding the quarter like it’s a lifeline, but he stays glued to the ground. Tim already knows the choice he’s going to make— he’s going to back down, just like Tim did when Dick gave him the speech about making the right choice.

(“I let you make the choice for yourself because I knew you’d make the right one,” Dick said.

Which begs the question— what if Tim had made the wrong choice?)

“I suppose I can wait,” Damian says. “But Richard— if nothing bad happens—”

“I’ll drive you down here myself,” Dick promises.

Damian looks at Tim, and then pockets the quarter.

“You know, I can just drive back here with spare change,” Tim says mildly.

Dick doesn’t say anything.

“So is that it? You’re not going to let me make the choice for myself because you no longer think I’m going to make the right one?”

“No,” Dick says simply. “I’m not going to stop you from resurrecting your dad— _again_. But I won’t let you put Damian through the hell you went through.”

“It wasn’t hell,” Tim says. “It was closure.”

But then again, he thinks, that’s not something Dick understands. Not really. Bruce’s raison d’être was founded on a profound lack of closure, and he made sure the concept stayed foreign to Dick.

Tim’s dying on a hill that doesn’t even exist for Dick.

\--

Tim doesn’t step off the loop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bruce's POV is up next.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce is prone to mistranslations, just as everyone else.
> 
> (Or perhaps _shared habits_ has always been more oxymoron than earned luxury, and Bruce, characteristically, is behind the times.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which we have Bruce walking the tightrope between father and brother, and Dick walking the tightrope between brother and father.

Bruce walks into an ambush.

“Actually,” Dick says, “you walked _me_ into the firing squad.”

Either way, Bruce steps out for a thermal lance and comes back to find Dick in the middle of a standoff.

“And now the cavalry has arrived,” Tim says. “Spare me the dramatics, Dick— this is a shootout, and you have us outgunned.” He flicks an inscrutable look Bruce’s way. “You were just stalling until B came, weren’t you?”

“You’d outdrawn me,” Dick says simply.

Neither of this is strictly true; clearly Dick meant for Bruce to hide until everyone had gone, having decided through mutual silence that it would be best if Tim and Damian weren’t privy to their plans, but communication through silence is really just overreliance on shared habits, and Bruce—

Bruce is prone to mistranslations, just as everyone else.

(Or perhaps _shared habits_ has always been more oxymoron than earned luxury, and Bruce, characteristically, is behind the times.)

“I heard your arguments,” Bruce says. “Both sides.”

It occurs to him that this is madness— that he is uniquely unsuited to playing peacemaker, and the only choice left to him now is to lay down the law. He’s upended Dick’s plans, and the window of opportunity to extract Dick from this moral quandary is rapidly vanishing.

He’s already missed his cue.

“Father,” Damian says, “if you cut out that coin, the recently resurrected will die, and you will have killed, however indirectly— you wouldn’t kill Bane, you wouldn’t kill K.G. Beast, you wouldn’t kill the _Joker_ , but _now_ you choose to pull the trigger?”

“Suppose someone like the Beast catches wind of the well,” Bruce says as evenly as he can manage. “Suppose he wishes he had succeeded in his mission to kill Dick? What then?”

Damian’s mouth snaps shut, and even Tim looks vaguely ill.

“Or,” Bruce continues, “let’s say people start wishing themselves back in time— _one_ time traveler is enough to unravel the universe, and now we have dozens, maybe hundreds. What then?”

Bruce has never been the deontologist his Robins make him out to be.

“We could wish limits on the well’s powers,” Tim says. “It’s madness that Ra’s al Ghul has the power to grant miracles at his fingertips, while we hamstring ourselves at the slightest possibility—”

“I wished for the well to vanish,” Dick says, “and when that didn’t work, I wished people wouldn’t be able to find it. Twenty minutes later, you showed up with Damian in tow— I think it’s safe to say wishing limits won’t work. And _look_ —”

Bruce doesn’t stop him when he reaches for the lance.

Dick turns it over in his hands. “You don’t trust me,” he says to Tim, “but you trust him, don’t you?” He nods at Damian.

“On this matter, yes.”

“Good.” Dick beckons Damian over. “Why don’t you give it a go, see if you can cut through the rock around the coin.”

Damian shoots him a horrified look. “You want me to _kill_ —”

“Cut the coin loose, then leave it in the water. None of the wishes should be affected.”

After a beat, Damian takes the lance. “And once you’ve proven you’re capable of removing the coin?”

“I very much doubt that will happen.”

They watch in silence as Damian disappears under the surface, lance in hand.

“He’s found the coin,” Dick says when the water lights up, and Bruce starts counting the seconds as they pass. A moment later, the water dims and Damian breaks through the surface, gasping for air.

“You were right,” he calls out when he catches his breath. "The lance didn't work on the rock."

Dick turns to Tim, eyes hard. “Ra’s al Ghul knows how to destroy his Pits— he did the research because he knew they could fall into the wrong hands. So yes, _he_ might feel comfortable exercising what you call the power to grant miracles. Now look at us. We don’t know where the well came from, we don’t know how to control it, we don’t know how to destroy it. We know nothing— what gives you the confidence we can harness its power?”

Tim says nothing for a long time. Bruce is beginning to think he’s dropped the matter when he suddenly says, “Is that it? Would you feel better about its existence— and continued existence— if we knew how to destroy it? And if time proves that the wishes don’t go bad?”

“No,” Bruce says.

“Why?”

“Because it’s all powerful and indestructible,” Damian says quietly. He’s handed the lance back to Dick, who’s patting Damian dry with his cloak. “And it doesn’t take no for an answer. Just like Batman.”

\--

Like his mother, Damian goes straight for the jugular.

\--

“He doesn’t mean it,” Dick says later in the car. “Not in the way you think it does.”

“He absolutely means it,” Bruce tells Dick. “And I know you think the same thing— you said as much to me years back when you asked why I didn’t let metas into Gotham.”

Dick jerks back violently— in surprise, Bruce thinks, or maybe offense. It’s too dark to tell.

“It’s okay,” Bruce says. “It doesn’t change anything.”

\--

Like his son, Bruce, too, aims for the jugular.

\--

You outdrew me— Dick keeps saying that. He’s fast on the draw, faster than Bruce and Jason and Tim, but speed born from reaction is useless in a gunfight; Dick’s undoing is that he prefers to wait.

“I don’t know what you were expecting,” Bruce says when Damian announces that he’s going to live with Tim. “You were the one who taught him—”

“How to run away?”

“How to elicit the reaction he wants _by_ running away.”

Dick stares at him. “Is that why you’ve never visited us at the hotel? You didn’t want to ‘reward’ him for being mad?”

“That’s different—”

“I ran away twice,” Dick says almost thoughtfully. “When I was Robin.”

Thrice— but then again, only Bruce counts New York.

“You didn’t come after me the first time,” Dick says. “Not at first— you tried to wait me out, and you won that time.”

“You won the next time.”

“Not really.”

“You’re mad at me,” Bruce says, “for not chasing after you.”

He did that, he wants to say. He did that for the two months Dick was living as Ric Grayson, and he learned that chasing after someone sometimes looks like loving from afar — lonely rooftops, misinterpreted silences, rejected calls.

“No,” Dick says. “That would be pointless.” He leans his head against the window, eyes closed.

After a moment, Bruce turns on the radio.

\--

They enter Gotham proper at the height of rush hour.

Their halfhearted attempts at conversation lapsed into silence twenty minutes ago, but someone called Barns Courtney is playing softly on the radio. “I like it,” Dick said earlier when Bruce tried to change the station.

“I can turn up the volume,” Bruce offers as a peace offering of sorts.

“No,” Dick says, and when Bruce looks over, he sees that Dick is pinching his eyes shut with one hand. “Bruce— stop the car.”

The car is already stopped. Dick’s bent over on the curb as he retches, one hand on top of the car door and the other pressed against his stomach.

Bruce’s first suspicion is magic.

“No,” Dick rasps, “just a headache.”

The passersby scatter as Dick empties his stomach on the sidewalk.

“Sorry,” Dick mutters when the car behind them honks in disgust. He wipes his mouth, then gingerly lowers himself back into the passenger seat. He doesn’t bother with the seatbelt and Bruce doesn’t have the heart to remind him.

Courtney’s voice is still coming through the speakers. _Oh Lord, set my soul, take my pain and turn it into gold_ —

Bruce turns off the radio. “I’m taking you to the brownstone,” he says, keeping his voice low.

Dick doesn’t answer.

\--

But he doesn’t resist either.

\--

“I don’t want to climb three flights of stairs,” Dick says tiredly, coming to a stop in the foyer. “I’ll just crash in the garden room.”

He means the lone bedroom on the garden level— the one that would have been Alfred’s, had he lived.

(But then again, Bruce wouldn’t have moved out of the manor in the first place if Alfred had survived.)

“It’s empty,” Bruce says. “I never ordered a bed for it.”

Dick sighs.

“Come on,” Bruce says. “You can sleep in my room— it’s only two stories up.”

Dick’s swaying on his feet, but he makes it up to Bruce’s room under his own steam before collapsing on the bed. He’s clammy to the touch, paler than a ghost and sporting bruised-looking eyes, and he’s still clutching his stomach like he’s fighting back a wave of nausea.

Bruce has just enough time to draw the curtains shut before Dick bolts upright, hand clamped over his mouth. Bruce’s lightning reflexes saves the duvet— he closes his eyes and listens as Dick retches into the waste bin. “I left my phone in the car,” Dick says once he’s done.

Bruce blinks at the non-sequitur.

“I need to call Damian. Tell him I’m spending the night here, in case he doubles back to the hotel.”

“I’ll do it,” Bruce says, pressing Dick back into the pillows.

Dick is silent.

Bruce watches as he retches again into the bin.

“Don’t tell him I’m sick,” Dick says finally. “It’s— emotionally manipulative. I don’t want him to think that of me.”

“I won’t,” Bruce says, and leaves to make the call from Dick’s phone.

Damian picks up thinking it’s Dick, and he’s inordinately disappointed when he hears it’s Bruce. Bruce has gotten used to that— he’s an old hand at bearing his children’s disappointment. He dutifully relays Dick’s message to Damian, who ends the conversation with a clipped _understood_.

Bruce wanders back to his bedroom— Dick’s asleep on top of the covers. He’s still wearing his jeans. He’s still wearing his boots.

If Alfred were here—

If Alfred were here, he’d remove Dick’s boots. He’d make Dick change into pajamas. He’d probably make Dick eat something too.

He unlaces the boots. That, he can do. He fills a glass with water and sets it on the nightstand, along with Dick’s phone and a sheet of Tylenol.

He thinks about getting Dick to change, but all of Dick’s stuff is at the hotel. Still— he rouses Dick, and gets Dick to change into one of his shirts. It’s too big on Dick, and it hangs loose on his frame. Dick pulls on a pair of Bruce’s sweats and climbs back under the covers, but not before dry swallowing two Tylenol. He refuses the water— says it makes him queasy.

“You keep throwing up,” Bruce says. “You need to stay hydrated.”

“I just need to sleep this off,” Dick says. “You know the drill.”

\--

Alfred was the one who knew the drill.

\--

The nausea hits Dick at full force around midnight, and Bruce finds him flat on the tiles.

“Don’t start,” Dick groans when Bruce crouches down next to him. “I’ve hit a lull and I need the time to send my texts.”

He’s squinting, and Bruce thinks the light from the phone can’t possibly be good for his head, but he sits down on the ground and watches as Dick sends three rapid-fire texts, then levers himself up gingerly to send two more while leaning against the toilet.

“Talking to Damian?”

“No.” After a beat, Dick elaborates: “I’m talking to my team of Nightwings.”

“You have a team of Nightwings,” Bruce echoes, flabbergasted.

“They covered for me,” Dick says. “While I was indisposed.” He pauses. “I was against it after I regained my memories, since they’re, you know, civilians. But— I don’t really have a leg to stand on at the moment.”

“I think it’s a good idea,” Bruce says.

He also knows he will never tolerate a team of _Batmen_ in Gotham as long as he draws breath.

“They’re gonna get killed in action,” Dick says with morbid certainty. “They don’t even have the gear for it.” He bends over the toilet again and pukes— it’s just water and stomach acid at this point.

Bruce runs his hand down Dick’s back. “It’s okay,” he says quietly.

“It’s really not.” Dick leans his forehead against the toilet seat. “But I don’t have a choice.”

“You could ask one of your brothers to cover for you.”

“Which one? The gunslinging outlaw? The Robin I fired? Or the traumatized thirteen-year-old?”

Bruce means to say something helpful, like _how about Batgirl?_ What comes out is: “ _Why_ did you fire Tim?”

Because objectively—

“Tim was a good Robin,” Bruce says. “He was never half as difficult as Damian. Wouldn’t it have been easier for you if you didn’t have to train the kid from scratch?”

“He tried to fight Jason for the cowl,” Dick says, exhausted. “I wouldn’t have put on the suit, but they outdrew me—”

That word again. But Bruce is intimately familiar with the context this time.

“You were mad at Tim,” he says, and this feels like a revelation.

“It was more complicated than that.”

“Did you chase after him?”

“Not until the very end.”

It’s too dark for Bruce to make out Dick’s expression, but he knows without looking that it’s regret.

“Turns out I’m more like you than we both expected,” Dick says.

This would be the time to offer reassurance, Bruce thinks. But what kind? The right words elude him— they always do.

He misses his cue.

“I’m surprised you stayed in with me,” Dick says, just as desperate as Bruce to change the subject.

“Gotham will be fine,” Bruce says. “You come first.”

Even Dick’s silence sounds taken aback.

\--

So Dick doesn’t know.

Bruce suddenly feels ill.

\--

There are times when Bruce’s inadequacies hang over Dick like Falada’s head in the goose girl story, whispering at every turn, _alas, alas, if poor Alfred knew, his loving heart would break into two._

Bruce isn’t sure what that makes _him_ in the metaphor, but he’s sure it’s nothing good.

“That would make _me_ the princess,” Dick notes wryly. “Well— I suppose I do love you like salt.”

“That’s the wrong goose girl story,” Bruce informs him.

“You’re not making any sense,” Dick says. “Look— if you want to make me feel better, you can come narrate this game to me.”

He’s watching a NFL replay on mute.

“I don’t know much about football,” Bruce warns him.

“That’s fine,” Dick says. “Just tell me whenever someone scores a point.”

So Bruce settles in to watch the Rams wipe the floor with the Patriots. Dick doesn’t last very long; ten minutes into the game, he slides under the covers and presses his face into Bruce’s side.

“The light hurts my head,” he explains, and Bruce hums, tries placing a comforting hand between Dick’s shoulder blades.

He’s thin. Too thin.

“What’s going on?” Dick asks sometime in the middle of the second quarter.

“The Rams are winning, 17-0,” Bruce says.

“Oh,” Dick says. “What happened to the Patriots?”

Bruce, again, is not a football man. He’s barely following along. But— “The problem,” he says, “is that the quarterback’s trying to do everything.”

“Funny,” Dick says. “I didn’t think you’d think that was a problem at all.”

“I do,” Bruce insists. “He should be a cautionary tale. Look what happens when you try to take care of everything alone.”

Dick laughs softly. “Don’t take something I love and turn it into a lecture.”

“I’m just saying— he wouldn’t have dropped the ball at the one-yard line if he didn’t try to do everything himself.”

“Bruce, the man never even made it to the one-yard line. Please don’t compare me to that dumpster fire of a quarterback.”

“Never,” Bruce promises.

\--

Love like salt— that’s the real cautionary tale.

 _I think about resurrecting Alfred every day_ , Bruce types out in a message to Damian once Dick has fallen back to sleep. _So does your brother_.

He doesn’t send it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) What Bruce means when he says Dick's speed is born from reaction: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/feb/03/good-guys-draw-faster-gunfights  
> 2) The Barns Courtney song playing on the radio is Champion.  
> 3) The goose-girl story Bruce has in mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goose_Girl  
> 4) The goose-girl story Dick has in mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goose-Girl_at_the_Well  
> 5) Jason's POV is up next.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Although, come to think of it, what constitutes an acceptably specific anxiety?
> 
> Jason is trying to keep some perspective here.

It’s 4 AM and Dick can’t shake the feeling that there’s something wrong.

“There’s always something wrong,” Jason says. “That’s the way of the universe.”

This is something he’s come to accept. There is no paradise, nor will there ever be, because perfection doesn’t tolerate creation. It’s the height of irony: there is no room in Heaven for God.

Dick doesn’t want to hear this. He doesn’t say it out loud, but Jason can extrapolate from his silence that he’s not really interested in listening to Jason speculate on metaphysics, because it’s 4 AM in the morning and all he really wants to do is go to sleep. Of course, he can’t go to sleep because he’s worried about Bruce — nine times out of ten it’s Bruce — and while he could just head downstairs to check on the man, there’s also something to be said for maintaining some semblance of rationality. It’s hard to justify an early morning visit on the grounds of vague anxiety.

Although, come to think of it, what constitutes an acceptably specific anxiety?

Jason is trying to keep some perspective here.

An hour ago, Dick called to tell him there was a wishing well at his old headquarters and that was enough to send him running to the brownstone, seething at the insinuation that _he_ of all people could be the culprit. As it happened, the insinuation was imagined, his grievances fictional, and now as he sits cross-legged on Dick’s bed, picking at a loose thread on his shirt, he’s starting to feel a little stupid.

He’s always known that discretion is the better part of valor, especially when it comes to their family.

But he’s already here in Dick’s room, in Bruce’s house, and Dick’s not going back to sleep. Discretion is a distant dot in the rearview mirror; he showed his hand too early, and now Dick has solid proof of what he’s long suspected.

Jason is hardly made of stone.

“Since I’m already here,” Jason says, resigned, “why don’t you take a load off?”

“It’s 4 AM,” Dick says.

“You were the one who called me at three.”

“I thought I’d get the answering machine.”

“If it makes you feel better, you can pretend I’m the machine. I promise I won’t make a sound.”

That gets a laugh out of Dick.

“I’m being unfair,” Dick says. “Fine. I’m worried because I think we’ve missed the window.”

Jason mulls this over. “What do you mean?”

“It’s been weeks. News of the well must be spreading like wildfire. The cat’s out of the bag— we won’t be able to hold back the flood much longer.”

“There’s nothing on social media. Or else I wouldn’t have found out through _you._ ”

“Small mercies,” Dick says, dismissive. “Only owing to the nature of the wishes made so far.”

What nature, Jason thinks, equally dismissive. These are disparate events, all of them, and they both know that the motivations run the gamut from greed to grief; this is a hard, undeniable fact.

But still, he’s not blind. He recognizes a common thread of desperation somewhere in this mess, the through line of a story, and in Gotham, where the only real sin is helplessness, desperation is a shameful thing.

Desperation, so secrecy. Sometimes, it’s as simple as that.

“You want me to help you lock down the tunnels,” Jason says. “Is that why you called me?”

“Can you do it?”

“Not in the way you’re thinking." He’s reluctant to admit this, but— “At the time, I didn’t have the budget for a proper security system. The air was toxic— I figured that would be deterrent enough.”

“Even if you had scrounged up the cash, you would have had a hell of a time installing any equipment,” Dick says wryly. “The tunnels are structurally unsound— there’s no way to rig up anything complicated. Not without bringing the whole place down.”

“You ever consider that? Just— fill the hole with C-4 and watch it blow? The debris and rubble should cover the pit.”

“I did,” Dick says, and Jason can hear the smile in his voice. “But only briefly. The tunnels are too close to the Gotham rail, and we’re already on thin ice with Nakano— I’d hate to see the whole family branded as domestic terrorists.”

“That ship sailed a few months back.”

“Well— I’m trying to bring it back to shore.”

Dick, despite his better judgment, has always been an optimist.

Jason tries— and fails— to relate. Still— he tries. “We can always just flush out the pond and fill it with concrete,” he says. “That should nullify the wishing well without reversing any of the wishes already made. How’s that for a compromise with the Robins?”

Dick pinches the bridge of his nose. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to; Jason’s always been good at reading his body language.

“You want to reverse the wishes,” Jason surmises— correctly, judging by the way Dick sighs into his hand.

“Eventually,” Dick says. His hand is covering his eyes, so Jason can’t meet his gaze. “The concrete’s a good stopgap measure, but it’s not a long term solution.”

“Why do we need a long term solution? Does the wishing well exact a hidden price?”

“In a way. Sometimes there’s collateral damage.”

“So— a life of a random bystander for each resurrection?”

“No,” Dick says, “nothing so drastic.” He pauses. “Or clear-cut.”

“But you have proof,” Jason says.

“I do.” Dick drops his hand onto his knee. “You know that swimwear company Bruce was eyeing a while back?”

“Beachwear Ventures, right?”

“That’s the one. Anyway, the siblings who inherited BV were split on what to do with it. The brothers wanted to sell, but the sister wanted to keep the business in the family.”

“Didn’t they decide to look for a buyer in the end?”

“They did,” Dick says quietly. “But it’s off the market now. The brothers were in a fatal car accident a week ago.”

Jason straightens. “You don’t think the _sister_ —”

“She’s the sole owner now,” Dick says, “but no. She wasn’t the one who made the wish.”

“Who was it then? A competitor? A disgruntled employee?”

“A sixteen-year-old whose dad would have been in danger of losing his job if the merger had gone through.”

It’s the last answer Jason expected. “A sixteen-year-old?” he echoes in disbelief. “Are you sure?”

“I installed cameras in the tunnels.”

“And he wished for the Reeves to drive off the highway?”

“ _She_ wished her dad could keep his job.”

She didn’t ask for much.

“Christ,” Jason says. “Does the kid know?”

“She probably has her suspicions. But most people don’t look gift horses in the mouth.” Dick spreads his hands, as if to say, _what can you do_? “It won’t matter if we figure out how to remove the coin. They died because of the well— we can resurrect them by reversing her wish.”

“And if the wishes get reversed, but the brothers stay dead?”

Dick gives him a long, unreadable look.

“Even if you’re right,” Jason says, “why prioritize them over the others who’ve benefitted from the well?”

“Because it wasn’t their time.”

“Is that it? A good number of the resurrected had died untimely deaths.”

“I know,” Dick says, voice so low that Jason has to strain to hear him. “But the Reeves died of negligence on _my_ part.”

It’s an incredibly selfish thing for Dick to admit.

“Look at you,” Jason says. “Inflicting your conscience on everyone around you.”

“What would you do if you were in my shoes?” Dick asks tiredly.

Given the opportunity—

Jason would probably do the same thing. It’s not something he likes to dwell on, but hypocrisy has always been the lifeblood of vigilantism.

Scratch a hero, find a hypocrite.

“As long as you know why you’re doing this,” Jason says at last, “I’ll back your play.”

Dick studies him for the longest time. There’s something searching in his eyes, like he doesn’t fully trust Jason to keep his word.

Jason waits with bated breath for Dick to say something, but in the end, Dick says nothing at all.

\--

They pile into Jason’s car at first light.

There’s not much of it — the sky should be lightening into a fish-belly white, but the fog rolled in when they were talking and covered the city in gray. The streetlights are out; they were militantly extinguished at 7 AM sharp in the name of conserving electricity, so now Jason crawls down the road at a snail’s pace, Dick shifting restlessly beside him, the very picture of tedium and toil.

I could drive, Dick says absently, but it’s Jason’s car, Jason’s rules. Dick doesn’t mind. He’s been in a good mood since he clapped eyes on the fog. It gives us cover, he says with a shrug.

They don’t _need_ a cover, except Dick doesn’t want to be seen buying the equipment they need. It’s just bad optics, he explains, if Dick Grayson is seen buying a bag of concrete mix right before the wishing well gets filled.

Jason’s never known Dick to give a damn about what other people think, but then again—

Dick’s a natural showman, and it’s Bruce’s reputation on the line.

“There’s no avoiding blowback,” Jason says. “Sooner or later, someone’s gonna catch you fucking with the well, and _that’s_ when they’ll roll out the guillotine. I can already see the headlines: _NIGHTWING CONSPIRING TO KEEP THE CITY TRAPPED IN POVERTY AND SICKNESS_. You really think you’ll be able to keep Bruce out of this? Everyone knows he funds the Bats.”

A freight train whistles in the distance. Catherine used to call the sound her 7 AM wake-up call, back when she still bothered with euphemisms.

It’s been a long time since Jason cared about keeping up appearances, and longer still since someone needed him to sell the ruse.

“Do you really think I’m doing that?” Dick asks. “Conspiring to keep Gotham a shithole?”

“Fuck no,” Jason says. “Gotham’s doing a great job of that all on its own.”

“Tim and Damian think otherwise.”

“Since when do you give a fuck what the kids think?”

Dick scowls. “I’ve _always_ cared—”

“Could have fooled me,” Jason says. “Look, Dick— you _try_ to be nice, but Bruce chose you to be his right hand man for a reason, and it’s that you’re as inflexible as the day is long.”

An incredulous beat.

Then Dick gives him another one of those inscrutable looks. Jason waits for him to defend himself— to list all the times he yielded to Bruce’s will, or the occasions he intervened on Jason’s behalf— but Dick just presses his lips into a thin line, and lets the silence grow blistering.

Another one of Dick’s many qualities: he never questions the truth.

\--

That’s not quite the truth.

It’s not _inflexibility_ that makes the man, but rather the ability to make peace with reality and all it entails.

This is what sets Nightwing apart— from Batman, and then from Gotham.

\--

“What would you ask for?” Jason asks, just to pass the time. “Indulge me. If this were our private wishing well, what would you wish for?”

Dick sighs. “The same as everyone else, I suppose.”

“An answer other than Alfred.”

“I don’t have one.”

“Dick.”

Dick looks out the window. “The ability to see ahead.”

“Like Duke?” Jason can’t help his surprise.

Dick laughs soundlessly. “Like Duke,” he confirms. “But further.”

\--

But they’re both regular, non-meta humans, and so this happens:

“Hold on.” Dick straightens in the passenger seat. “Jason— is that a _news van_?”

Jason brakes. “ _Fuck_.”

\--

What makes Iago evil? It’s an irrelevant question, Didion assures you; it may be how she opens her third novel, but it’s just one of those little tricks of writing she likes to employ. The point is that she doesn’t ask. Maria Wyeth _never_ asks.

There is a difference here, a demarcation between moral skepticism and moral absurdism, and it may feel like splitting hairs to Bruce, but it’s a line Jason’s gotten to know very well.

What makes Iago evil? Jason doesn’t ask because he already knows.

It’s a war of attrition. I’m strong, you say, so you let the first temptation pass you by— and maybe you don’t even recognize this choice as a struggle, because the stakes may be high, but they’re largely impersonal. 

And yet— that still costs you something.

You just don’t know it yet.

Jason’s been around the block enough times to know that everyone pays, one way or another. Victory is the ability to choose the price, and so there are no clean hands among victors.

“I don’t know,” Dick says. “I’d still like to come out on top.”

He’s less upset than Jason expected.

“I’m seething inside,” Dick says. “Trust me, I’m beside myself with rage _._ And if I find out Tim is behind this, I’ll skin him alive. I want that on record.”

“Do you really think Tim could have gone public? With Damian watching him?”

They’re outside the tunnels, watching a storm of reporters descend on Nakano, the man of the hour. Nakano has removed his eye patch— the gaping hole glares out at his audience, who pays it no mind. Nakano himself is smiling.

Jason has never seen the man this triumphant.

Nakano stands tall among the crowd, looking every inch the savior Gotham needs.

“So much for a war of attrition,” Dick says. “The man caved within the first hour.”

“He _did_ reject Bruce’s help,” Jason says.

“He’s going to walk into those waters,” Dick says. “They’ll make a show of it. He might pray first. Or maybe he has a speech prepared — a plan that sounds wonderful on paper but makes no concessions to reality. And then he’s going to walk out with his eye healed.”

Either way, Gotham’s about to wake up to a baptism, followed by a miracle.

“You can’t stop him,” Jason says. “If you try to interfere— if you even try to debate him—”

On _live_ TV.

Jesus. The _optics_ —

“I won’t,” Dick says, glancing away from the spectacle to meet Jason’s gaze. “But you know we have to deal with this.”

No clean hands.

Dick looks like shit. He’s got dark smudges under his eyes like bruises, and where his cheek was pressed against the rough fabric of the headrest, redness stands out like a handprint — violence done unto his person.

Dick is trying to manage their situation — he’s trying to name their price.

Jason looks back at the circus.

The news crews are lowering their boom mics into the tunnels. Nakano’s nowhere to be seen. His secretary is taking off her heels, preparing for the long climb down.

“Fuck me,” Jason says to himself. “ _Fuck_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Joan Didion famously opens her third novel, _Play It as It Lays_ , with the question: "What makes Iago evil?"
> 
> Damian's POV next.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s nothing Damian can say to that. He’s not sure he wants to say anything either; he’s been wishing for Richard to take back control of Gotham ever since Father made his first misstep. Left to his own devices, Father takes two step backwards for every step forward; he’s lost Gotham, and he keeps losing Gotham. 
> 
> And yet—

During that long awful year Richard was away, Father made note of him just once in his records. _Our man in England_ , he wrote in the margins to explain where the intel had come from. And that—

That was a little on the nose.

But it seemed to be a term of endearment, or what passed for one in their family, because Mother had always referred to Father as their man in Gotham, up until she’d realized that their man had suddenly, inexplicably become Richard Grayson.

She had been most displeased.

Later, when Damian was recovering from his spine surgery, she asked him, “Do you know the story of the tiger and the fox?”

He did.

“Richard was the fox,” she said, “and your father was the tiger. And even though your father is dead, Richard has remained the fox, parading through Gotham only by the grace of Batman.”

Damian cast Richard a glance, but his brother was unperturbed.

“Perhaps,” Richard said, ever the diplomat. “But Talia, you’re forgetting that the fox outwitted the tiger. Is it really so terrible to be superior in wit?”

“It is _always_ shameful,” Mother said coldly, “to be inferior in strength.”

And so it is.

Father was inferior in wit, Damian was inferior in strength, and Alfred paid for their shortcomings with everything he had. In the cold light of a post-Bane dawn, it was clear that Mother had voiced an irrefutable truth.

And yet—

“What would you have done in my place?” he asked Richard months later, when it was just the two of them in their hotel room. “How would you have rescued Alfred?”

Richard didn’t answer.

“Would you have gone at all?”

“I don’t know,” Richard said gently. “Damian— I wasn’t there. I can’t Monday morning quarterback this.”

He didn’t absolve Damian, or say all the right things like he usually did, but Damian didn’t want to hear them.

And now—

Now Damian has an answer to his question: what would their man in Blüdhaven have done?

Richard is on TV.

Correction: _Talon_ is on TV.

Talon is nothing like Nightwing. At first glance, he is narrower in the shoulders and trimmer in the waist, perpetually hunched over, unassuming in stature; he cuts an unimpressive figure, even in a city overrun by child soldiers.

At second glance—

Nakano takes a step back.

The tunnels have gone silent.

Talon drops down soundlessly in front of the cameras. There’s a flash of yellow — _his_ _eyes_ , Drake mutters — and then everything goes dark.

But the film’s still rolling.

“Christopher Nakano,” Richard rasps through the black screen. “Is it true that you conspired with the Joker to steal the election through the use of a wishing well?”

There’s a muted gasp—

“That,” Nakano says, “is a baseless accusation.”

“Is that so?” Richard asks softly. “We have evidence.”

“He has no such thing.” Drake’s already on his feet. “The cameras were installed _after_ the election, and Nakano—”

Nakano, for all his hostility toward the cape community, is an honest man.

Damian, for once, is at a loss for words.

“It doesn’t matter,” Thomas says. He’s on his feet too, and Damian watches mutely as he claps a hand on Drake’s shoulder. “Sit down, Tim. Can’t you see? He’s just trying to stall the mayor.”

“A stalling tactic,” Talia would say if she knew. “Impressive— for a circus brat.”

“He’s lying,” Drake mutters. “He’s setting the stage for our intervention.”

A beat.

“Do I scare the Court so much,” Nakano says, equally soft, “that they have sent a Talon after me?”

Another beat.

“There are things,” Richard says, “that the Court cannot and will not abide.”

There’s a moment of silence, and then Nakano chuckles. “Is that a phone?” he asks, incredulous. “Have the Talons finally entered the twenty-first—”

“ _HA.”_

“Pardon me?”

“ _HAHA. HAHAHAHAHA—_ ”

The cackle is unmistakable — only the tinny quality of the sound reassures them that Richard must have produced a recording, rather than the Joker himself.

“I’ll make you mayor out of the goodness of my heart,” they hear the Joker say. “There’s not much of that in here, but I’ve been a changed man since Gotham City put her faith in me. Now, my price is cheap— my miracles only cost 25¢ apiece.”

“That’s the recording I brought home,” Drake says, eyes wide.

Not quite. The implications—

Thomas exhales.

“He must have come up with this on the fly,” Drake says quietly. “Probably edited the recording on his phone.”

“Is that even possible?”

“Yeah. Lyrebird’s made some pretty amazing progress in AI-based media synthesis.”

“Still— falsifying evidence? You don’t think—”

“You mean, wouldn’t this make him a dirty cop?”

“ _Yes_. Not that the Joker doesn’t deserve worse, but isn’t this _Dick’s_ cardinal rule…”

They’ve stopped paying attention to the TV, but the Joker’s still talking.

 _Richard’s_ still talking.

Everyone is talking over each other, volume waxing and waning, but the man of the hour, Nakano—

He says nothing at all.

\--

The bathroom door is closed when Damian gets back, which lets him know that Richard’s inside.

He knocks twice. There’s no answer— never a good sign, but not uncharacteristic for Richard.

( _He’s mad at you_ , his mother’s voice whispers to him in the back of his mind.)

“Richard? Are you in there?” he calls out.

The silence stretches on. After a moment, Damian pushes the door open.

Richard’s asleep in the tub.

“Hey,” Damian says.

Richard doesn’t stir.

Damian dips a finger in the water. It’s long gone cold; Richard must have fallen asleep a while ago.

“Richard,” he says, and shakes his brother’s shoulder.

Richard groans, and bats his hand away.

“Wake up,” Damian says, insistent. “At least go sleep on the bed.”

Richard opens his eyes. He looks up at Damian, and then, sighing, presses his thumb to his eye. “What are you doing here,” he says. “I thought you were staying with Tim.”

Damian is incredulous. “I saw you on TV— did you really think I wouldn’t want answers?”

“Right.” Richard sighs again. “Look— let me get dressed.” He grimaces when he sits up, clearly feeling the pain from a morning of body packing, but then he glances at Damian and his frown quickly smooths out into impassiveness. “Just— go sit on the bed and wait for me.”

Damian complies without a word.

When Richard emerges a few minutes later, he’s suited up in his Nightwing uniform. “I have to head back out to the tunnels in a few minutes,” he says, looking apologetic. “Now that we finally have a legitimate reason to be there—”

“Is what you said about Nakano true?”

Richard sighs one more time.

The sound tells Damian everything he needs to know.

“You had Todd make the recording, didn’t you? I know he’s trained in mimicry— he could have pretended to be the Joker and no one would have been the wiser.”

“He volunteered,” Richard says shortly. “Things looked like they were about to get real ugly, so we had to move fast.”

“So— is Nakano just collateral damage then?”

“Hardly. I just wanted to get him off the cameras and out the tunnels. It’s Talon’s word against the mayor’s — I don’t think he has anything to worry about.”

“But he fled, all the same. He won’t look innocent to Gotham.”

“He’s a politician with a hundred-strong PR team at his beck and call; I’m sure he’ll figure it out.”

“But doesn’t this— look, everyone’s saying you crossed the line. Doesn’t that bother you?”

Richard makes a frustrated sound. Then he steps back from the door, defeated, and takes a seat next to Damian. “Look,” he says at length, “I’m not proud of what I did. I’m not— but what’s done is done, and now I need to make this whole mess worth it.”

“Can you?” Damian says, dubious. “I think Nakano is dour and short-sighted, but he wasn’t doing anything wrong today. If he’d taken control and set up a system—”

“He would have lost control within a week.” Richard gives him a wry look. “Do you really think the feds would have allowed Gotham to stay in possession of a wishing well?”

“Oh.”

“Exactly.” Richard rubs his shoulders absently. ”They would have seized it before the month was out. God knows what they would have done with it.”

He doesn’t even entertain the notion that it might have been used to do good.

“They can still seize it now,” Damian points out. “If you try to stop them, you’ll be bringing down the kind of heat we’ve been trying to avoid.”

“Hence the Talon get-up.”

Plausible deniability.

“Exactly,” Richard says. “Now listen— we have a couple of weeks before things get hairy, and Bruce isn’t going to be around to help. He’s recusing himself from this case— don’t look at me like that, you know it’s for the best. The well poses a conflict of interest to our family, and in an ideal world, Clark would be handling this.”

“Because he’s morally impeccable.”

“Because he lives in a third-floor walk-up and he’s still paying off the mortgage.”

There’s nothing Damian can say to that. He’s not sure he wants to say anything either; he’s been wishing for Richard to take back control of Gotham ever since Father made his first misstep. Left to his own devices, Father takes two step backwards for every step forward; he’s lost Gotham, and he keeps losing Gotham.

And yet—

Damian’s not saying that Richard’s been a disappointment so far. He’s _not_.

Richard has outstripped Father in every way that counts.

“Listen,” Richard says. “Once I get involved with this as Nightwing, there’s going to be some blowback. People are going to come up to you and ask you to plead their cases — when that happens, I want you to steel yourself and walk away.”

Mother used to give a variant of that speech to him on an annual basis. It’s astonishing how Damian’s parents start blurring into each other as the years wear on.

“Can I count on you to do that,” Richard says.

He looks so, so tired.

“Yes,” Damian promises. “You can trust me, Richard.”

\--

“What the fuck,” Timothy says. “Of all the _stupid_ plans he could have come up with—”

“He’s covering all our bases. I don’t see _you_ coming up with anything better.”

“Using the _Court_ as a cover? He’s writing checks he can’t cash.”

But that’s just how vigilantism works.

“Todd’s helping him,” Damian says. “It’s just a temporary plan, Timothy, but it’s a _good_ one, and it would go a lot smoother if you’d help—”

“Leave me out of this. I’m— what’s that word he used again? _Recusing_ myself from this travesty.”

 _You should have more faith in Richard_. That’s what Damian means to say, but as he turns the words over in his head, he realizes how hollow they ring. Richard’s gotten in bed with the Tribe of Judas —the word _faith_ is hardly applicable anymore.

“If he gets himself unmasked again,” Timothy mutters. “My God—”

Damian bristles. “You say that like it was his fault the first time.”

“Wasn’t it?” Timothy asks sharply. But then his eyes soften. “Sorry. That was unfair of me.”

It was. It _is_.

Timothy holds Richard’s grief against him, even when he has no right to do so. He claims the moral high ground, but in the end, it really just boils down to jealousy.

Richard’s never explicitly said that he prefers Damian, but—

Neither of them are stupid. Neither of them are blind. Richard reclaimed his own mantle in passing it down to Damian, and Timothy’s never been able to make peace with that decision.

If Damian were a diplomat, he would have said, “Timothy— you’re the eternal skeptic, for Christ’s sake. You have no faith in anyone, and maybe that’s justified, maybe it’s not, it hardly matters anymore. But you’ve always liked to be needed, and you’ve always wanted to be in the thick of the action, so why stop now?”

But here’s the thing: Damian _earned_ his role as Richard’s Robin. He fought for him, bled for him, died for him.

He has _never_ betrayed his brother.

Drake—

Drake runs at the first sign of trouble. He sees Richard as the reparations owed to him by the universe (but mostly by Bruce), and he’s perpetually dismayed by Richard’s reluctance to play his parent.

He doesn’t want to be Richard’s brother— not when brothers are born for adversity.

They don’t need Drake.

(“We were the best,” he told Richard before everything went to hell, and he knows it in his bones that this is still true.

He’ll make it so.)

\--

After Alfred’s funeral, his mother said this to him: “Your father believes in facing enemies head on. That’s his undoing, really. He has no strategy.”

She was really speaking about Damian, but he supposed she was trying to spare his feelings. It was her way of saying, _sorry that the one grandparent who loved you is dead_.

“What would you have done?” he asked her weeks later, when he thought he’d hit his lowest point.

“I would have attacked Arkham,” she said, looking pensive. “And once they rushed into the city to fight me, another team would have made its way into the manor to rescue the old man.”

He recognized the strategy — _àn dù chén cāng_.

But then again, Damian had never been any good at subtlety.

“Yes,” his mother sighed. “You doomed yourself the moment you signed up to play the fox.”

\--

The comm crackles to life at midnight. Drake’s already gone to bed; he didn’t say a word when Damian asked if he’d mind switching codenames tonight, but he handed over all his equipment, which was really all the permission Damian needed.

“Robin,” Nightwing says on the other end. “I’m headed over to the tunnels to secure the well, and I need you to stand guard at the entrance. Do you copy?”

“I copy,” Damian says through Drake's voice modulator. “I’m on my way. Over and out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) I didn't really specify which language Talia's speaking to Damian, but I meant for it to be Chinese -- and in that case, she wouldn't really be referring to the story about the tiger and the fox, but rather the proverb itself. Still -- the proverb originates from the story, which according to history was told to a king by his advisor. Story link: https://www.thedailychina.org/chinese-fables/
> 
> 2) "Our man in..." is a reference to Graham Greene's _Our Man in Havana_. 
> 
> 3) Body packing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contortion
> 
> 4) The phrase àn dù chén cāng is the second half of a proverb that roughly translates to doing something in broad daylight to cover up other illicit activities.
> 
> 5) Dick's POV next. We'll be cycling through the same characters in the same order.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s not that Dick is naïve enough to think they can come out of this clean— Gotham has been synonymous with collateral damage for over forty years, and Dick knows better to think they’ll win against the inertia of history.
> 
> In a clash between history and hope, history will out, nine times out of ten.

“Your PR problem isn’t going away,” Jason says as he pries Talon’s yellow contacts out of his eyes. “The way I see it, you should just wish for a robot army to guard the well.”

Dick adjusts the respirator on his face. “Sounds lethal.”

“It’s that or yield the well to the pitchfork mob. I, for one, won’t mind a couple dead yahoos— and face it, Dick, there’s going to be a body count either way, so what we need to do here is cut our losses.”

“And what constitutes an acceptable loss to you?”

It’s not that Dick is naïve enough to think they can come out of this clean— Gotham has been synonymous with collateral damage for over forty years, and Dick knows better to think they’ll win against the inertia of history.

In a clash between history and hope, history will out, nine times out of ten.

“Anyone tries to profit,” Jason says, his face a study in careful indifference, “we shoot. Give no quarter, take no hostages—”

“You make me pull, I’ll shoot you dead, is that it?”

“It’s ‘I’ll put you down’ and yes— I propose we do just that. It doesn’t matter _how_ we announced the existence of the well— what matters is that we did, and soon we’ll have the whole continent’s criminal population kicking down our door. You think people won’t kill for this kind of power? People have done worse for far less— you were down in Santa Prisca; you saw what Venom did to the place. What makes you think Gotham’s going to fare any better?”

“I _don’t_. I just don’t see how a robot army is supposed to help. Say the feds get down here first — what are you going to do? Gun them down and start a revolution? Or— since you brought up Santa Prisca— what happens once the criminals start recruiting kids to do their dirty work? Are you going to let the robots massacre them too?”

“Of fucking course not— Dick, you realize _we_ have the wishing well at our disposal, right? We can wish the feds and kids to safety as soon as they step foot in the tunnels— don’t look at me like that, you know my plan is the _only_ game in town right now. You have nothing better.”

“Or we can ask the well to give us the name of the first wish maker,” Dick says. “Then we can track them down and make them take their wish back— nip this whole thing in the bud.”

“And what if they say no?” Jason gives his holstered gun a meaningful look. “What then?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it— no point in hashing it out right now, because you know as well as I do that plans rarely translate smoothly from paper to real life—”

“We’re living out the consequences of a failed plan, so I can see that well enough. Is that what you want me to do? Hinge everything— _again_ — on one of your half-baked notions, and when it inevitably fails, wait for your survival instincts to kick in?”

“My _people_ instincts,” Dick says, weary. “I’ve got good instincts about how people work.”

“You also thought Bruce was sane for the entirety of your childhood,” Jason says, just this side of malicious. “What makes you think you’ve got these unimpeachable instincts?”

“I don’t,” Dick says. “But God knows yours are equally shitty.”

It occurs to him— distantly— that the smart thing to do would be to take the high road, before this devolves into yet another standoff. The same old fight in the same old place— different brother, but how does that saying go again?

Second verse, same as the first.

These days, he just beats a dead horse to a pulp.

“I’m sorry,” he says, catching himself before he really makes a mess of things. “That was uncalled for.”

Jason looks supremely unimpressed with his apology, but he has the good grace to stay silent.

“Look,” Dick says, feeling the beginnings of a headache swell behind his eyes, “I know I don’t have ‘unimpeachable’ instincts, but sometimes we need to choose a path and stick to it, so let’s just _assume_ I do for now. I can’t do this with you fighting me every step of the way. You’re just going to have to give me the benefit of the doubt.”

“You mean leeway,” Jason scoffs, as skeptical as a man can sound.

“Call it whatever you want.”

It’s not _leeway_ , he thinks— it’s breathing space.

His comm crackles, and he closes his eyes.

It’s Robin.

“There’s a crowd headed your way,” Robin says.

“How many?”

“I’d say a hundred strong. Maybe more.”

“Wielding pitchforks?” Jason asks, wry.

“More like shotguns.”

“See,” Jason says. “We’re already out of time.”

“What do you want me to do?” Robin asks, soft.

He bleeds uncertainty through the radio as he waits for further instructions— that alone tells Dick just how big a clusterfuck he’s made of things.

“That’s Damian outside, isn’t it?” he says out loud, hand over his mic.

“You should go get him,” Jason says. “Before the crowd has its way with him.”

“Don’t do anything,” Dick says, but he knows it’s futile even as he says it. “Wait for me to get back.” Then he unmutes his mic and gives his orders: “Don’t engage with them. Don’t let them see you. Go home, Damian.”

“They’ve already seen me,” Damian says. “It’s fine— I can lead them around the tunnels in circles. No one knows this place as well as I do—”

“Robin. Get the fuck out of here. That’s an order.”

Damian doesn’t answer.

“You might not get to him in time,” Jason says. “Look— I’m not saying we should go whole hog on hypocrisy, but we _are_ going to be using the well either way, so we might as well buy ourselves the necessary insurance—” 

Dick follows his gaze to the well.

“The way I see it,” Jason says, “you can be a good hero, or a good parent, but you can’t be both.”

\--

The first rule of vigilantism: you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

\--

Dick reaches Damian just in time to see a bullet make a U-turn in front of his brother and slam its way into the crowd.

It’s more or less what Dick expects— the bright red spray of an arterial hit, followed by a sharp scream and then a sudden hush as the mob realizes their burgeoning criminal careers have come to an unceremonious end.

“I’d call 911,” Dick says, stepping neatly in front of Robin. “That man dies, the owner of the bullet’s gonna be on the hook for murder, and the rest of you for conspiracy. At the very least, aiding and abetting a criminal.”

He knows even as he says this that the man won’t make it.

“ _You_ wished for this!” someone calls out from the crowd. “You think we’re blind? We _watched_ that bullet ricochet off an invisible—”

“And it’ll do that again if you take another shot at us.” Dick gestures lazily behind him, in the general direction of the well. “I wouldn’t say I wished for that man to take a bullet to his shoulder, but it seems the well’s taken liberties with my words. It tends to do that— you see then why I can’t let you through.”

He watches as the whole lot of them white-knuckle their guns.

“Those won’t do you any good,” he says mildly. “You try to rush me, you’ll find yourselves facing down friendly fire.”

The tunnels have gone silent, save for the labored wheezes coming from the dying man — those reverberate through the cave like a ringing condemnation of everything Dick’s done.

Dick, no longer twenty-two, can’t bring himself to give a shit.

He makes his way toward the sound, and comes to a stop in front of his victim. No one’s bothered to make a tourniquet; the man surrounded himself with murderers whose first instincts are to pillage and plunder, and now he’s paying the price.

“Robin,” Dick says, “call an ambulance for him, will you?”

He crouches down next to the man. He’s got nothing on hand to fashion into a tourniquet, and he doesn’t like the man enough to test the tensile strength of his uniform— but he still wants to offer him some measure of comfort, cold as it is.

“I’m going to reverse all the wishes,” Dick says, as plainly as he can. “Can’t promise you’ll come back to life as a result, but there’s always a chance.”

It’s better than what the mob would have given Damian.

He straightens and walks back to Damian. Puts a hand on the kid’s shoulder and notes that he’s stiff as a board. “Did you call it in?”

Damian nods.

“You good?” Dick doesn’t wait for him to answer. He steers his brother around and walks him through the tunnels, hand on his back.

“Are we just going to leave them there,” Damian says after a beat. “Aren’t you worried what they’ll say to the—”

“I didn’t pull the trigger, Dames.”

“But you made the _wish_! After everything you said, _you_ made the—” His face crumples. “Did I force your hand?”

“ _They_ forced my hand,” Dick says, because that’s the truth— Bruce’s longstanding tradition of holding Robin responsible for the vagaries of Gotham’s underbelly can take a hike. “ _I_ chose to be a responsible parent.”

Damian just looks stricken.

There’s a part of Dick that’s terrified Damian’s about to have one of those watershed moments when he realizes Dick’s really no better than Bruce. But then he thinks about Tim, and—

 _I can live with that_ , Dick thinks to himself.

In the end, disillusion is just part and parcel of growing up.

\--

Jason’s true to his word.

“But I do have your back,” Jason says, gesturing at his army of robots. “They only answer to Nightwing.”

\--

The advent of the robots brings:

  * A public condemnation from the mayor’s office.
  * Five editorials on the night’s events, published in rapid succession, ranging from thinly veiled hostility to open calls for Nightwing’s arrest.
  * An opinion piece that suggests Nightwing has become Gotham’s own warlord.
  * A flood of emails— a few threats, mostly pleas— directed to Commissioner Gordon, who gamely forwards every last one to Nightwing’s inbox.
  * An hour-long YouTube video detailing the varied misfortunes that have befallen the Ryder family in recent years, concluding with a heartfelt plea to use the wishing well.
  * A request from Vicki Vale for a sit down interview— “I’m giving you your day in court,” she says, like she’s the one doing Dick a favor, and while her charm has never worked on him—



\-- 

He visits Vicki Vale at night.

“I don’t have time for an interview,” he says right off the bat. “And I’m not interested in sitting here and justifying everything I’ve done.”

“But you _feel_ justified,” she says, watching him like a hawk.

“Yes.”

“What happened to Talon?”

“I took care of him.”

“Was he lying?”

“Why don’t you see for yourself?” He offers her a folder. “Everything you want to know about the well is in here.”

“You have proof of Nakano’s—”

“No. But I have information on how the Reeves brothers died.”

Her gaze sharpens.

Dick gets to his feet. “I’ll let you make up your mind on whether the robots are justified,” he says with a tip of his head. “You get to play judge and jury— sway the public opinion and all that. I’d round out the trio and let you play executioner too, but as it is, I like my job.” He smiles at her— shows his teeth, really, because there’s not much to be glad about. “Still. Two out of three isn’t half bad.”

\--

The fallout is immense.

“Surely you can’t be surprised,” Tim says, “that the girl’s father lost his job?”

“I’ll take care of that,” Dick says. “Call one of Bruce’s lawyers— see to it that the girl’s cleared of manslaughter charges.”

Tim scoffs. “She’s as good as convicted in the court of public opinion.”

“Good thing then that public opinion can be bought, isn’t it?” Dick pinches the bridge of his nose. “Just get this done, Tim. I need to go see Lucius.”

“And after?”

“I’ll deal with the well.”

Tim shakes his head in disgust. “Aren’t you even going to _apologize_ —”

“Would that fix things?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Tim says. “It’s the right thing to do.”

“But I’m not sorry,” Dick says. “I did what I had to do, Tim. So how can I be sorry about that?”

\--

“You want me to give Takada a job.” Lucius is courteous, as always, but Dick hears the underlying skepticism all the same. “After his daughter _murdered_ the Reeves to prevent the merger.”

“ _Inadvertently_ ,” says Dick, even though that doesn’t make it much better. “Look, I can guarantee she won’t be making any more wishes.”

“But what do you suppose she would wish for, if she could?” Lucius peers at Dick over his steepled hands. “Or are you saying intent shouldn’t matter?”

“Not unless you want to prosecute the whole city.”

“No,” Lucius agrees. He pauses, as if to gather his thoughts. “I’m not opposed to granting your request,” he says eventually. “But if you’re only asking out of guilt, then let me reassure you that you have done nothing wrong.”

Dick laughs— it comes out too mirthless, dryer than the Sahara, and he wishes he’d stayed silent. “Everything I’ve done so far has been underhanded,” he says, resigned.

“Perhaps,” Lucius allows. “But Gotham is a twisted place, and if the people had their way—” He shrugs. “We’d all be on our way to the guillotine. And that would just be the beginning. Once baser desires were fulfilled, Gotham would have moved on to satiating its curiosity. After gluttony comes ambition; I imagine Gotham would have become a city of metas and supervillains.”

His reasoning is flawless— it falls in line with Dick’s private thoughts. This is more than absolution; it’s justification. And yet—

“Even so,” Dick says, “twisted or not, you’ll agree that I’m now complicit in their oppression?”

Lucius inclines his head.

“I don’t have a choice,” Dick says, “but I think twelve-year-old me would have been very disappointed.”

But then again, the son of a billionaire styling himself as Robin Hood was always ludicrous.

“Jace,” he adds, “would be very disappointed, if he knew.”

“He doesn’t know?” Lucius looks faintly surprised. “You two used to be as thick as thieves.”

Something in Dick goes cold at the memory. “I haven’t talked to Jace in years,” he says. “Ever since he left home.”

“He’s still wandering the world,” Lucius says, sounding pained. “But he’s settled down a bit.” He smiles — Dick thinks he means for it to seem wry, but his pride leaks through anyway. “He’s sterner than you would recall.”

“Is he,” Dick says softly. He doesn’t say that Jace has always been stern— just in different ways from Lucius. “I guess I’ll just have to see for myself.”

\--

Excerpts from a series of impromptu interviews with Dick Grayson, held on the steps of Wayne Enterprises:

_Q: Mr. Grayson, I understand your family has close ties to the Bats. Have you been in contact with Nightwing after he seized the wishing well?_

_A: We haven’t been in contact with the Bats for years._

_Q: So Nightwing has not offered your family access to the well?_

_A: No. Why would he?_

_Q: What are your thoughts on this current state of affairs, given that Mr. Wayne has been Batman’s primary financial backer for the last decade?_

_A: I have faith that Nightwing is doing his best to keep Gotham safe._

\--

Dick catches a flash of yellow eyes on his way back to his car.

Cobb.

“I wouldn’t,” Dick says into the silence. “Haven’t you heard yet? We’re as good as invincible.”

There’s a quiet huff of laughter.

“Don’t make me wish you into non-existence,” Dick says, too quiet for his great-grandfather to hear. “I could really use the break.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) "You make me pull, I'll put you down" comes from Justified, a criminally underrated show that has excellent writing and outstanding acting. Is Jason a fan? Absolutely. 
> 
> 2) Jace is Timothy Fox, Lucius's eldest son and the new Batman in Future State.
> 
> 3) Let's hope the next update doesn't take three weeks.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s realized with a sudden clarity that Dick came over tonight to have an accounting of sins. Dick’s beat him to the punch, again, and all the anger Tim’s been nursing and suppressing and sublimating finally rips out of him like a bomb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: something akin to a forced abortion happens in this chapter, and it's done to a WOC by a man.

Maria Peña is thirty-nine years old and a lifelong Gotham resident, an ardent supporter of Christopher Nakano, a nurse by trade and an activist by vocation, a teacher by her own reckoning, and a domestic terrorist by Dick’s — a harsh assessment, certainly, one that attributes to malice what ignorance and optimism can explain, but Dick won’t be swayed. Peña _understands_ people, he says; she grasps the baser instincts, the loftier ideals, the entire spectrum, and _that_ — that’s enough to remove the alibi of ignorance.

Tim can’t speak to her ability to understand people, but she can certainly read them — she has him pegged the moment she opens the door.

“Robin,” she says, cool as a cucumber. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Mrs. Peña.” Tim dips his head in greeting. “May I come in?”

“Nightwing couldn’t make the trip himself?” But she moves out of the doorway all the same to let him pass. “Make yourself at home.”

He follows her into the living room and takes a seat at her invitation, which is a warmer reception than he was expecting.

“Coffee or tea?” she asks placidly.

He glances up in surprise. “No, thank you.”

“Please,” she says. “I insist.”

“Coffee then. Black. Thank you.”

“It’s no trouble.”

She rejoins him with a steaming mug of black coffee and water for herself. He keeps his expression blank, which she decides to take as muted surprise anyway; she smiles, a small thing, and rests her hand on the slight swell of her stomach. “I’ve been cutting back on caffeine.”

It’s not a graceful segue into the main topic, but never let it be said that Maria Peña beats around the bush.

“Mrs. Peña,” Tim says, keeping his eyes carefully trained away from her stomach. “You know why I’m here.”

“You’re here at Nightwing’s behest, I presume.” She sets her glass down on the coffee table. “Was he too busy fielding interviews to come himself?”

Tim shrugs. “You’ve kept him busy with your well.”

“Which I heard _he_ put to good use.” She pauses. “I haven’t seen either of you on the streets lately.”

“It’s hard to patrol when you’re worried about deflecting bullets.”

“So he _did_ get some mileage out of my wish.”

“I suppose.”

“Of course, it _is_ ironic how his wish to keep you Bats safe during your patrols ended up being the very thing to take you off the streets. I thought he’d reverse his wish when I first heard— it’s what Batman would have done, if the well had taken away his ability to take out his anger on Gotham’s residents.”

“That’s not what Batman does.”

“I suppose he makes the whole thing more palatable by dressing it up as crime-fighting, but I assure you, Robin, that’s exactly what your boss does. It was bad enough when he was on his own, but then he started bringing along a _child_ — it was unconscionable.”

“It gave us _Nightwing_. Considering everything he’s done for this city— you could stand to be grateful.”

“What is there to be grateful for? That a man, every bit as angry as Batman, swaggered back into Gotham to take the reins because he saw that Gotham’s poor were on the cusp of having _more_? That he sent you to _my_ house to ask _me_ to abort my baby — let’s not mince words, Robin, that’s exactly what would happen if I were to retrieve the coin.”

“That might not happen,” Tim says, as soothingly as he can manage.

Maria laughs, bitter. “Then you’re an idiot who didn’t do his homework. Don’t you know how the coin works?”

“I believe I do, seeing how I’ve been studying its handiwork for the past month. It works its miracles through the path of least action — it wouldn’t have put a baby into your womb, Mrs. Peña. It would have cured you of infertility— or your husband, if he was the one afflicted. I apologize for assuming. Either way, I imagine reversing the wish wouldn’t affect the baby at all.”

“And what if it does? You’re asking me to gamble my baby’s _existence_ on a hunch. Surely even you must see that’s—”

“Cruel? Downright psychopathic? You don’t need to be diplomatic, Mrs. Peña.” He’s curter than he’d like to be, but patience has never been his strong suit. “You’ve said far worse about Nightwing in the last ten minutes, and I haven’t bat an eye. I figure you’re entitled, seeing as he’s labeled you a domestic terrorist. But in between all the name-calling, I want you to consider what you’ve done to Gotham. I want you to think about the Reeves and the Takadas — and they’re just the tip of the iceberg. Say what you want about my family, but we’re not the ones with hundreds of lives weighing on our conscience. There’s still time to make this right.”

She shakes her head slowly.

“Mrs. Peña,” Tim urges, “you need to understand that _we_ have control of the well right now. Given what you think of Nightwing — surely removing the well from his power is incentive enough.”

“It was never supposed to be in _his_ power,” she says, rueful.

“Clearly,” he agrees. “You meant for Nakano to take control. Talon wasn’t just blowing smoke, was he? Nakano might not have conspired with the Joker, but he _did_ win through fraud—”

“He _didn’t_.”

“Whatever you say. We have no way of knowing otherwise.”

“I _wouldn’t_. Despite what you may think, _I_ abide by the social contract. There _is_ such a thing, even in Gotham — not that you vigilantes would spare it any thought.”

“Strong words coming from a woman who unleashed a Babylonian weapon of mass destruction on her city, just so she could have a biological child.”

“You think I did it for _myself_?”

Tim gestures at her. “The evidence suggests so.”

She covers her stomach with her hand, as if to shield the baby from his scrutiny. “I would have done it either way. We were going to do _good_ things with that well. Chris was going to use it to fix the homelessness crisis—” 

He shoves down the pang he feels at the achingly familiar argument. “Then why didn’t you?” he asks roughly. “You had a head start.”

She gives him a stony look. “The Reeves.”

“I thought that might be it.” He waits a beat before continuing: “Look, I believe you. The discretion you showed in choosing the abandoned subway tunnels — it spoke to a certain civic-mindedness. You could have dropped the coin into one of Gotham’s public fountains if you really wanted to plunge the city into chaos.”

“I did say I like to abide by the social contract.”

“Then prove it. Take back your coin. I come in good faith, Mrs. Peña. We’re willing to work with you to find an acceptable solution, but we’re operating on a tight deadline. The situation right now is untenable — you don’t want Nightwing to go nuclear, so give us a gesture of good will.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. Her face hardens instantly.

“Nuclear?” she scoffs. “He already has a robot army to do his bidding — what would his version of nuclear even look like? Is he going to put a gun to my head and pull the trigger if I refuse to remove the coin?”

“Of course not,” Tim says, scrambling to steer the conversation back into safer waters. “But we _can_ make life very difficult for you if you don’t cooperate. This isn’t a threat, Mrs. Peña — it’s just SOP for us lowdown vigilantes. Nightwing isn’t inclined to go easy on you—”

“Then don’t. He’s welcome to put a bullet in my brain if he wants — let’s see what _that_ does to the well. Fifty-fifty my death makes it a permanent fixture in Gotham.”

“You’d cede _that_ kind of power to Nightwing.”

“It wouldn’t be his forever. You said it yourself— the situation’s untenable. Sooner or later, Nightwing _will_ lose control, and when that day comes, Chris will be waiting in the wings.”

“And what about the Reeves?” Tim says, disgusted. “You just said you put on the brakes after their deaths.”

“What happened to the brothers was a tragedy,” she admits, dropping her gaze down to her lap. “But I still believe that in the right hands, the well can do more good than harm. If Chris can use it to wean the city off Wayne money—”

“What’s wrong with Wayne money?”

“The fact that it’s _Wayne_ money. The people of Gotham shouldn’t have to live and die by the whims of the local billionaire.”

“No,” Tim says caustically. “Why should they, when they can die by yours?”

\--

The rest of the conversation is best summed up as the proverbial train wreck.

\--

“And I suppose you were one of the casualties of the train wreck,” Jason says, surveying Tim with a critical eye. “You look like you got flattened by an eighteen-wheeler.”

“I tried negotiating with terrorists,” Tim says. “That was my undoing.”

“No shit.” Jason waves aside his robot guards so that Tim can pass through unhindered. “So Dick’s plan didn’t pan out?”

“It was always a long shot, but with _me_ at the helm? It failed right out of the gate. _Dick’s_ the one who’s good with people, except that version of our brother’s gone AWOL. The one we’ve got right now calls regular citizens domestic terrorists—”

“He’s not wrong—”

“All I’m saying is, what the fuck happened to his _unimpeachable_ people skills. They’ve left us high and dry, and _no one else_ is qualified to step into his shoes— don’t look at me, Jason, I think today’s proved once and for all that I’m _shit_ at talking to people.”

“Firstly, Dick’s people skills have never been unimpeachable,” Jason says mildly. “Secondly — he’s just stressed. He always gets like this when Bruce bails.”

“And that’s what troubles me,” Tim admits. “He’s always so _nice_ when Bruce is around, but the second Bruce is gone? _Bam_. He flips a switch and we get the evil stepmother. It makes me think the Dick we see the rest of the time is—”

“Fake?”

“Well. Yeah.”

“He’s not _faking_ being your brother,” Jason says. “If that’s what you’re worried about. It’s just— look, he’s always been an angry man. To his credit, he’s good at hiding it most of the time, but that anger still bleeds through now and then.”

Tim considers this. “So you’re saying I should cut him some slack because he’s crumbling under pressure.”

“He’s not _crumbling_ — fuck, have you seen him lately? The guy’s a machine. He’s got ice water running through his veins.”

“I thought you were convincing me to cut him some slack.”

“I’m trying to _explain_ Dick to you. Look, kid, there comes a point when you’re just all talked out. Dick hit that point one shitty parent ago, even if he doesn’t let on.”

“So now he’s a man of action.”

“ _Exactly_.”

“What sort of action do you think he’s going to take against Maria Peña?”

“No idea, but listen — I don’t want you giving him any grief when he _does_ do something to fix this mess. He doesn’t do things lightly, Tim. Whatever he does, it’s gonna be justified.”

Not much isn’t in trench warfare, and they’ve settled in for a war of attrition.

“It’s just,” Tim says. “I wanted to make things easier for him, but instead, I fucked everything up. Do you think I can wish myself back a couple hours ago? Just — call a redo?”

He looks up when Jason’s silence stretches on too long.

“That was a _joke_ ,” he says tiredly. “I’m not really going to wish myself back in time.”

“No,” Jason says, expression unreadable. “ _That_ would be a bad idea. But if you’re going to fuck with the temporal order, the question really becomes: why stop there?”

Tim takes a moment to digest what Jason seems to be proposing. “Are you saying I should _wish_ the negotiations successful?”

“I’m saying,” Jason says with infinite patience, “it’s high time we dethrone Maria Peña as the first wish maker.”

\--

The rest of the day is best summed up as the proverbial train wreck.

\--

Dick doesn’t even bother ringing the doorbell — he comes in through the window, and he goes straight for the kill.

“You wished for the _Joker_ to be the first wish maker,” he says, voice flatter than roadkill and twice as dead. “You brought a time paradox down on our heads?”

“I changed _one_ detail in the timestream,” Tim says. “And that happened to be the identity of the wish-maker. Nothing else changed, Dick — I made sure of that. The language I used was airtight.”

“Of course,” Dick says. “I’m sure the _Joker_ created a wishing well underneath Gotham and decided to pass up on an opportunity to fuck with Bruce. Jesus, Tim, if you were going to fuck with history, you should have replaced Peña with one of us!”

“I couldn’t! Look, if I had made it one of us, then that would have meant we had _really_ needed that well at some point in our history — for all I knew, that could have meant Bruce losing to the Joker, and I couldn’t risk that happening. But replacing Peña with the Joker? It makes sense, Dick — this whole thing fits his MO. The ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ theme, the sheer _grief_ it’s caused us, the location! He’s always been obsessed with Jason. And he _was_ the one who brought its existence to our attention.”

“None of this changes the fact that you just _aborted_ Peña’s baby out of existence—”

“I wished Peña fertile and backdated the wish to six months ago—”

“Even if she gets pregnant again, it won’t be the _same_ baby—”

“How do you know? _Fuck_ , Dick, we’re all flying blind here—”

“— the worst part is, you did this _without_ her consent—”

“I didn’t think you were so hot on that—”

“And if all this wasn’t bad enough, you also mindfucked an innocent man into committing a crime he had nothing to do with—”

“Did you just describe the _Joker_ as innocent—”

“He certainly was in this case!”

“And now he isn’t! You need to get the fuck off your high horse — how is this any different from what you did as Talon? _You_ accused Nakano of conspiring with the Joker. I’m making sure we can square the facts with your claim, so we can get out clean.”

“We’re not getting out of this _at all_ ,” Dick says, voice sharp. “The first wish needs to be renounced willingly. You think the Joker’s going to do us a favor and send the well packing?”

“Sure— either way, the bodies are going to stack up. Most people wouldn’t be able to live with themselves, knowing they’d be responsible for all the reversed resurrections, but the Joker? He’s got a sadistic streak a mile wide.”

“Sounds like you’re calling _me_ a psychopath.”

Tim grins at him, quick and ugly. “If the shoe fits.”

He’s realized with a sudden clarity that Dick came over tonight to have an accounting of sins. Dick’s beat him to the punch, _again_ , and all the anger Tim’s been nursing and suppressing and sublimating finally rips out of him like a bomb.

“Are you going to say I have you outdrawn?” he asks. “Because that’s just not true. You wait to pull, Dick, you always have, because that makes whatever you do next _justified_. So go ahead and tell yourself whatever you need to hear to sleep at night, but we both know you let _me_ do the dirty work this time. All there’s left to do is to pull the trigger, and you get to do the honors. _You_ get to land the killing shot, _you_ get to be the hero—”

The door slams shut, cutting him off.

Dick’s left the building.

After a moment, Tim moves to shut the window. He looks at his reflection in the glass, awash in red from Dick’s taillights.

The lights dim, and he hears the purr of the engine fade into the distance. He closes his eyes, then opens them again once the red has faded from his retinas. He looks back at himself in the window.

Dick is gone, but Tim is still all in silhouette.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) The title is taken from Joan Didion's essay, "On Morality."  
> 2) This is loosely inspired by the Supernatural episode, "Wishful Thinking."


End file.
